Everything You Need To Know To Enjoy Mezcal

A Gentleman's Guide to Drinking and Appreciating Mezcal

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Picture yourself walking into the hippest, most secretive, underground speakeasy in a back alley in New York or Los Angeles. You poke your head in and you adjust to the dim lights before you make eye contact with the mustachioed bartender. He's wearing a velvet jacket and his tattoos are creeping up his neck. You look across the bar and wonder: What is everyone drinking?

No, not tequila – this isn't Spring Break. Everyone’s sipping on mezcal and all you know about mezcal is that it isn't tequila and it comes with a little worm inside it. Well, allow me to fill you in on what’s unquestionably the hottest spirit right now.

Why Mezcal?

Mezcal is artisanal, traditional and the vast majority of it is made by small producers in the Mexican countryside. In other words, it's cool. The buzz hasn’t eluded big brands like Diageo, Bacardi and Jose Cuervo who’ve all scooped in to add mezcal brands to their collections. George Clooney has also jumped on the mezcal trend.

Mezcal's delicious, usually smokey, flavor is nothing new for the Mexicans who’ve been drinking it for generations. Go to a wedding or a baptism in the southern state of Oaxaca and you'll see the mezcal flow. Some rural towns even invite every guest into their home with a shot glass – yum!

But mezcal should also come with a warning. Due to the high alcohol percentage, a few glasses can turn that classy night at that hip speakeasy into you stumbling into the street belting out Guantanamera at the top of your lungs. In other words, treat mezcal well and it'll do the same.

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Mezcal Vs. Tequila

I’ll tell you what mezcal isn’t – it isn't a spirit that’ll make you hallucinate, as you might have heard (you’ll need to pick a different Oaxacan mountain fungus for that). Nor is it that crap in a plastic bottle you took home from Spring Break which has a worm in it, though, the worm, or maguey, isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Also, all mezcals aren't tequila, but all tequilas are mezcals. Allow me to explain.

Like tequila, mezcal is a spirit made from the pineapple-like heart, or piña, from the Mexican agave plant. However, tequila only comes from the blue weber strain of espadín agave while mezcal can come from different strains, including tobalá and tepeztate, which may take decades to ripen. For tequila, the piña is steamed in an industrial oven, but for artisanal mezcal, producers toss it onto a fire pit with piping hot stones, and ground it with a stone wheel pulled by a donkey, giving it that smokey flavor it’s known for.

Tequila is restricted to one region, the state of Jalisco and some surrounding towns, but mezcal can technically come from anywhere in Mexico – well, technically speaking. Government regulations dictate that mezcal can only be called mezcal if it comes from nine states, the primary of which is Oaxaca where there are over 3,000 distilleries, or palenques.

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Finally, while tequila tends to be distilled by seasoned mass producers, mezcal comes from thousands of different small producers, many of which aren't exported outside of Mexico, so, if you like mezcal you better book your flight to get the real experience.

As a matter of fact, I happen to be in Oaxaca City as I’m writing this guide, so I asked a local expert to tell me why it’s so key to taste mezcal where it’s produced. “You know the story of Mexico when you drink mezcal here. It’s more profound,” said Edgar Lara, the head bartender at Mezcalogia, one of the most popular mezcal bars in the city. "When people come they have more respect for it."

How To Enjoy Mezcal

Don't shoot it, that's disrespectful. Instead, sip your mezcal like a fine scotch, that's how the locals do it. Besides being the traditional way to do it, sipping mezcal is a damn good idea if you want to fend off that awful headache in the morning – mezcals usually hover around 50% alcohol content and over 75 proof. That means it could get you mighty drunk, mighty fast, so watch out.

Another way to avoid the spins is to chow down with your mezcal. You can drink mezcal at any time (it’s 5 o'clock somewhere) and with pretty much anything, so why not go with what it’s been traditionally paired with Oaxacan cuisine? No, that doesn’t mean a big fat Chipotle burrito. Oaxacan food is more along the lines of mole, a complex sauce sometimes with over 30 ingredients often including rich chocolate, tlayudas, a sort of Oaxcan-style pizza, or chapulines, crunchy grasshoppers. In Oaxaca, mezcal is usually served with orange slices and sal de gusano, a chile salt with little fried worms in it.

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How To Select A Mezcal

Since mezcal is so artisanal, Lara told me that every bottle can taste completely different. There’s also your pallet to factor in, as different flavors might pop for different people. That doesn’t make choosing a mezcal so simple. A good way to start is to determine which agave, or maguey, variety you like. Here are some of the most common:

Espadín - The most popular agave, which takes at least six years to ripen before it’s distilled. Espadín is best for cocktails and is usually smokey.

Tobalá - This agave can take 12 to 18 years to ripen, so it's rarer and thus tends to cost more. Also, keep in mind that you don't get many bottles per pina, so that adds to the price. Tobalá tends to be sweeter and smoother than espadín.

Tepeztate - Taking at least a quarter century to ripen, don't expect to find this mezcal at a bargain price, which is a shame because it's so damn good.

Jabalí - One of the most difficult agaves to grow – it has a history of exploding during the process – which takes 10 to 15 years to ripen.

Another thing to consider is how the mezcal was distilled. The traditional way is to distill it in clay pots, which provide an earthier flavor. Copper, on the other hand, leaves a finer finish. There’s also a method of distillation you should know about for your next dinner party and it’s called pechuga. If the word pechuga sounds familiar from your eighth grade Spanish class (it means chicken breast) then you’ve nailed it. Pechuga actually involves distilling the mezcal with an actual chicken.

How To Drink: Cocktails

While mezcal is traditionally enjoyed straight, it can add an oomph to your cocktail. The most popular you’ll see are mezcal margaritas or negronis and those are fine, just so long as you use espadín, according to Alejandro Medina, the head bartender at one of Oaxaca’s trendiest mezcal bar Sabina Sabe. He said if you mix a cocktail using a tobalá or jabarí strain of mezcal, you’re masking the flavor. "In my opinion, if you add another flavor, it’s kind of dirty,” he said. "You need to have respect for these mezcals.”

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Here are a couple of cocktail options to impress your friends with:

Last Word: Medina’s favorite cocktail is usually made with gin, but it’s even better with mezcal, according to him. To make it, add equal parts green Chartreuse, maraschino liqueur and fresh lime juice. "Gin is drier, but in this cocktail when you change the spirit, the flavor with mezcal – it’s powerful,” Medina says.

Naked and Famous: Lara at Mezcalogia loves to make this cocktail, which is made with yellow Chartreuse, Aperol and lime juice. “It’s a fiesta del sabor,” he says.

How To Buy

Mezcal is a ticking time bomb. With the spike in popularity, the delicious spirit will inevitably go the way of tequila and lose its traditional and artisanal process one day. More intimidatingly, since agave takes so long to ripen, experts are worried producers won't be able to catch up, or worse, they'll drain the agave supply entirely. "In five to 10 years if the people don’t care about the agave, the mezcal won’t exist," Medina says. So, what are you waiting for? Better enjoy that mezcal now before it's too late.

Rey Campero Espadín

Rey Campero makes one of the best artisanal mezcals silvestre, according to Medina. Silvestre, or wild, means the agave seeds are procured in the mountains and brought back to the distillery. Rey Campero is also conscious about sustaining the supply of agave, having planted 8,000 new plants in 2013, according to its website. Medina says he likes their espadín, because it’s a bit dry, a little bitter and not too smokey.

Del Maguey VIDA

Del Maguey VIDA is one of the best budget mezcals you’ll find in the US, which means it's a good place to start. It's organic, twice-distilled and kept in copper casks. Expect it to taste light and fruity with notes of honey and vanilla on your pallet. If you like Del Maguey, Lara says you should try the tobalá, which opens up your nasal passage and gives you some nice tongue tingles.

Real Minero Barril

The Angeles Carreño family who makes this mezcal has been doing it for four generations and they've built up a brand that's considered one of the best mezcals on the market. The piñas from the barril variety of agave are in the shape of a barrel, hence the name, and provide a unique and full-bodied flavor. All Real Minero mezcals are distilled in the traditional way with clay pots, but the best part, for Medina anyway, is the family's pledge to research and conserve agave, something that will hopefully have us enjoying Real Minero mezcal for years to come.

Nuestra Soledad Santiago Matatlan

This popular mezcal comes from arguably the most notable town in Oaxaca for mezcal, Santiago Matatlan, which is about an hour drive from Oaxaca City. Lara likes the espadín, which has hints of caramel, chocolate and banana. The reason for these unique flavors is because the agave grows in the mountains alongside these trees high, so it adopts their flavors.

Gem&Bolt

You’ll fall in love with this mezcal. Well, that’s the idea anyhow. Damiana, a herb found in Oaxaca is considered a love potion and it's infused into Gem&Bolt's mezcal. Medina says Gem&Bolt is a great introduction to mezcal since it’s middle of the road in terms of intensity — not too strong or smokey — and it tends to be on the sweeter side. It's also extremely popular among LA's hip crowd, so there's that.

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